Far-right Patriots’ chief declares death of EU migration pact

The president of Patriots has declared the EU migration pact dead, speaking to Euronews on the eve of the far-right group’s leaders’ first gathering ahead of Thursday’s European Council. 

Tomorrow’s pre-summit exchange of views is a regular appointment for other political families and will include the group’s heavy hitters, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from Fidesz, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen from France’s National Rally, Italian Deputy PM and Secretary of Lega Matteo Salvini and Geert Wilders, president of the Dutch Party for Freedom.

The leaders will meet in the centre of Brussels at Maison de Hongrie, an 18th-century building which previously housed the Belgian finance minister but was bought and repurposed by the Hungarian government in 2021.

‘Pact on migration is dead’

“The main topic of our meeting tomorrow will be migration and the way the European Union should treat member states that are in difficulties,” Belgian MEP Gerolf Annemans – the group’s president – told Euronews.

He flagged Germany, Hungary, and Poland as countries that are currently particularly affected by migration issues.

Patriots strongly criticised the Pact on Migration and Asylum, a major reform of EU migration policy agreed upon in May and still to be implemented, which includes provision for redistribution of asylum seekers among EU countries. 

“The migration pact that the European Union thought could be imposed on Member States right before the elections is falling apart,” said Annemans.

“Migration was a major issue in the electoral campaign. And the results of the Patriots parties shows that the pact, as it was designed by Ursula von der Leyen and others, is dead.”

The Patriots’ president said he envisaged “a new era on migration”, adding: “This is the issue that we want to put on this European Council schedule, and I expect the Council to admit it.”

Migration key bone of contention at EU summit

Migration is one of the key issues on the agenda at European Council summit that will gather the EU 27 leaders on Thursday in Brussels.

Heads of state and government will focus especially on external action, strengthening control of the EU’s external borders, increasing and accelerating returns of migrant people and the fight against weaponisation of migrants, human trafficking and smuggling.

A letter sent to leaders by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed ten possible future EU action points on migration, including several that reflect the Patriots’ agenda, such as building partnerships with third non-EU countries, advancing on so-called migrant ‘returns’, countering hybrid threats and strengthening security at EU borders’.

The letter also paved the way for “innovative ways to counter illegal migration”, in particular by “developing return hubs outside the EU” and “drawing lessons from the operations of the Italy-Albania protocol”, a controversial system recently begun, in which hundreds of asylum requests will be assessed by Italian authorities at a centre based on Albanian territory. 

This suggests the European Commission seems ready to lean towards an approach favoured by the Hungarian government and other far right forces, as underlined by Orbán during remarks before the European Parliament last week.

But von der Leyen’s letter also prioritised “implementation of Pact on Migration,” a deal opposed by Patriots, and from which the Hungarian and Dutch governments have sought an opt out to avoid implementation.

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Poland is also against the new rules, against which it voted last May. The Hungarians and Polish want to discuss migration issues with other leaders, but will try to erase any reference to the Pact on Migration in the conclusions of the EUCO summit, EU sources told Euronews.

“Politically [the Pact] is dead and that’s what all this talk should be about,” said Gerolf Annemans.

“Our idea is to link meetings of Patriots to the meetings of the European Council. It is good that we’ll link this to the functioning of the European Union and closely follow the agenda of the Council by meeting before the summit,” he said more broadly about tomorrow’s meeting.

The Patriots include 11 national parties from 11 EU member states. Its parliamentary group, Patriots for Europe, is the third-largest in the Eurochamber, with 86 MEPs, and can be crucial for the appointment of the next European Commissioners.

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